In this work we introduce two different techniques for the global optimization of surfaces and apply them to the task of
finding the optimal stitching seam between neighboring and overlapping 3D ultrasound volumes. Existing techniques
for US mosaicing, based on interpolation or planar seams, introduce artifacts into the composite volume especially when
using a large number of clinical scans. Our first method models the seam as a B-spline surface and treats its calculation
as a shape optimization problem. In this case the optimal location of the surface-defining control points is a large scale
constrained optimization problem, which is solved using a cooperatively coevolving particle swarm based approach. The
second method treats the seam selection as a voxel labeling problem, where each voxel in the composite volume is
labeled with its respective source volume. Therefore if we have N volumes, each voxel in the composite volume may be
assigned one of the N labels. The optimal labeling, which implicitly defines a seam, minimizes the intensity and gradient
difference between adjacent volumes The formulation is optimized using graphcuts, which guarantees that a global
minimum is achieved due to the submodularity of the energy function. The final composite volume is constructed voxel-wise
by taking the value of the source volume, which is designated by its label. Our application of this procedure is the
construction of composite ultrasound image volumes for incorporation into an ultrasound simulator. These methods are
validated on clinical US data acquired from obstetrics patients.
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